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As a defiant response to sad desk lunches, the Food52 team works to keep our midday meals both interesting and pretty.

Today: Go ahead an hit the snooze button—here's how to make and pack lunch the night before.

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Making lunch in the morning always sounds doable—until it's the morning. Somewhere between making sure the cat is fed, making sure you're fed, brushing your teeth, getting dressed, and sending one last email, you find yourself rushing out the door hoping that there will at least be a slice of birthday cake in the staff kitchen.

Instead of telling yourself every morning that this will be the day you pack yourself a proper lunch, accept your fate as a non-morning-lunch packer and spend those extra ten minutes doing something else. We're not suggesting that you skip lunch—we're big lunch eaters—we're just suggesting that you make lunch while you're making dinner. Here's how:

Roast chicken and fresh pasta never taste quite the same reheated the next day, but there are several dishes that do. Make quiche, stew, curry, or ratatouille for dinner and pack an extra serving for lunch—leftovers never tasted so good.

Rather than dress your entire salad at once, serve it onto individual plates before finishing it, then save the rest for lunch and pack the dressing on the side—this will keep the lettuce from getting soggy. The same goes for other additions like cheese on pasta, peanut sauce on your spring rolls, and ice cream on pie (okay, that one goes without saying, and yes, pie counts as lunch—sometimes).

5. Turn your leftovers into lunchtime bestovers.

Just because your roasted vegetables will never taste quite the same as they did when they first came out the oven doesn't mean they can't get a second wind. Take five minutes while you clean up dinner to help your leftovers put their best food forward: Cube your roasted or boiled potatoes and and mix them with a little bit of curry and some mayonnaise for potato salad; fry your leftover cous cous or polenta into crispy patties; or shred your roast chicken and put it into a tortilla with some shredded cheese for a quesadilla to reheat at work.

Just think of all the things you could do in the morning with 10 extra minutes:

Make yourself a cup of tea and silently ponder that mornings aren't all bad.

Photo of quiche by Sarah Stone; photo of spring rolls by Betty Liu; all others by James Ransom

A New Way to Dinner, co-authored by Food52's founders
Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, is an indispensable playbook
for stress-free meal-planning (hint: cook foundational dishes
on the weekend and mix and match ‘em through the week). And
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